WE have betrayed by the European Union.

I contacted our MEP for help in the campaign to save the care homes only to be advised that it was a European matter?

Well, let me take you back to June 1940, when the great might of the German army reached the French coast in about six weeks and stayed there in Europe until they were defeated on May 8, 1945.

Who was it who won the Europeans their freedom?

Who was it who laid down their lives in order to provide Europe with their freedom?

I will tell you who.

It was forces from all over Great Britain and the rest of the world.

Thousands of British solders, men and women, have never returned to their homeland but rest in cemeteries in the graveyards of Europe.

Some of the men and women that did come back home now find themselves in old age the forgotten heroes, the unwanted and are being forced out of their residential homes by the closure of the 32 care homes in Lancashire.

If this is not a European matter then for God's sake tell me what is.

It is very clear to me the Europeans have forgotten those dreadful times, so too have the councillors and the government.

Rest assured, we old ones who are left, will never forget our fallen. We will not desert them, they did not fly the flag of surrender and neither will we. We owe them so much.

Our own old people of today who are in these homes will stay there, not for the time being but forever. Then, and only then, can we and the councillors and the Government be allowed to wear our poppies with pride on Remembrance Sunday.

NORMAN HICKEY, Lyndon Court, Great Harwood.